In my search terms I purposely left out the words "Hardwood" and/or "Maple" just to see what would come up.So I am still not seeing anything that supports your claims. So this makes me even more eager to see your cites that back your opinion.

Could you be so kind as to present some cites to back up your opinion?Because I have not seen any studies that favor your opinion............

You haven’t seen any studies that favor your opinion either – at least not any peer reviewed studies.

The fact that 20 years after your “study,” neither the USDA FSIS nor the FDA nor the NSF recommend wood cutting boards over plastic should tip you off that that the study is not all that it claimed to be.

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Edited to add:I even did a search with the exact term "wood is not safe for food preparation" derived from your statement that hardwood is unsanitary,

Go back and re-read what I wrote with your eyes open this time and don't put words into my mouth. Nowhere did I say that wood is unsanitary. I simply commented that “wood is not safer” – a statement based on the fact that there is not a single peer-reviewed study I know of that concludes that it is.

In my search terms I purposely left out the words "Hardwood" and/or "Maple" just to see what would come up.So I am still not seeing anything that supports your claims. So this makes me even more eager to see your cites that back your opinion.

Did you notice that the second article you referenced was written by one of the authors of the first? Since you like his comments, I’m excited to hear your theory on how exactly a glass cutting board is twice as likely to give you salmonella as compared to wood? But I digress.

Back to your original request; you need only to look to the author’s own words. They presumed the bacteria on the wood had died because they were unable to find them yet they offered no confirmed explanation for the mechanism of death. This should have been your second tip off – that after 20 years, they have not found any mechanism that is confirmed to kill bacteria in/on typical wood cutting boards.

Here is a copy of their peer reviewed research (published a year later) that notes the difficulty of recovering bacteria from wood cutting boards of any type. The article also notes that oiling a wood cutting board has no effect on sanitation. Most importantly, you will note that unlike the press release, nowhere in the journal article is there a claim made that wood is safer than plastic. That the referees would not allow such a claim is your third tip-off.http://www.treenshop.com/Treenshop/ArticlesPages/SafetyOfCuttingBoards_Article/CliverArticle.pdf

Another obvious flaw in the study is that it looked at 5cm squares of cutting board. It is not uncommon for wood cutting boards to crack, split, or separate at the lamination – all of which introduce significant contamination risk not controlled in the experiment – risk that should be noted is not present in plastic cutting boards.

Here is another article from the same time as the press release you originally cited. It contains some interesting quotes:

“But the pair quickly found that within three minutes of inoculating wooden boards with cultures of common food-poisoning agents -- up to 10,000 cells of Salmonella, Listeria, or Escherichia coli 99.9 percent of the bacteria were unrecoverable and presumed dead. Under similar conditions, none of the bugs placed on plastic died… While the wooden boards appear to kill bacteria, "we've not recovered the little critters' dead bodies," Cliver acknowledges. "So all we know is that by the best available means, we can't get them back after they go onto a board?' The big concern is whether bacteria hiding deep within the wood might subsequently surface to contaminate the foods on the chopping block. "As best we can tell, that isn't going to happen," Cliver says.http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Wood+wins,+plastic+trashed+for+cutting+meats.-a013436783

Like before, you will note that they initially presumed the bacteria dead, but had to acknowledge that they simply don’t know where they went nor what became of them - presuming they are dead with no reason to make such an assumption is a pretty big jump. Even more interesting is the unsupported Hotel California claim that with wood cutting boards, bacteria check in but they don’t check out. “As best we can tell” is not science and that they give no theory why this is the case is troubling. Maybe, they are right though it’s hard to think of a reason why bacteria wouldn’t move in both directions and without that reason, you should assume it does. These guys could benefit from a review of Occam's razor. We do know, on the other hand, that a plastic cutting board in good condition is not absorbing bacteria into the material to a subsurface level where sanitizers cannot reach them.

Wood may indeed be safe, however there is no scientific basis whatsoever for your claim that wood is safer than plastic.

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"We make great pizza, with sourdough when we can, commercial yeast when we must, but always great pizza." Craig's Neapolitan Garage

I would LOVE to know what the "safest" known cutting surface is. Although by no means a germophobe, I am someone who is horrified when i see the crudités being prepped on the same surface where raw chicken was being chopped minutes earlier.

The article quoted above is laughable. One should not be simultaneously referencing letters received from schoolchildren and expecting to be taken seriously in any field of science, should they?

To wit:

Although some established scientific laboratories say their results differ from ours, we have received multiple communications from school children who have done science projects that have reached essentially the same conclusions that we did.

Chefs know that, any way you slice it, wooden surfaces are kinder to knife blades than either plastic or glass. But in recent years, everyone from kitchen suppliers to the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has urged cooks to cut on non-porous materials, typically plastic. Supposedly, plastic boards give bacteria, such as Salmonella in chicken, less chance of escaping rigorous cleaning, thus reducing the chance that such bugs will survive to contaminate other foods.

If such arguments have frightened you away from slicing, dicing, or boning on wood, you may be able to bring your butcher block out of retirement. New research indicates that the safety advocates were wrong: Pathogens prefer plastic.

I use Hard-Maple wood surfaces for several reasons, two of the main ones are sanitation and knife edge care, And with the full blessing of the FDA, My State inspectors, and the team of county Health inspectors from the 2 different counties that we work in.

No I'm not done, I just don't have the time right now to discuss this further. Does it matter how long ago the studies took place when the have not been refuted?What year did mankind learn the world was not flat, and did indeed orbit the sun? Has anyone proven that wrong yet? Does the length of time since that discovery make it any less valid?

TXCYour argument is so full of holes, I don't even know where to begin.

Apparently you wouldn't know a hole if you fell in it.

I made a very simple statement: Wood is not safer than plastic. It's clearly supported by the fact that there is no peer reviewed science that says wood is safer. None. I never said that wood is not safe. I’m not sure why you are having such a difficult time understanding that?

You are hanging your hat on a press release and a story based off a press release. You can’t point to any science (press releases and news articles are not science) that says wood is safer than plastic. I’m not sure what you are thinking when you write “does it matter how long ago the studies took place when the have not been refuted?” There is nothing to refute. The study did not establish that wood is safer. It seems the press release has confused you.

They rushed to press release before they knew what they were talking about and had to back away from the unsubstantiated claim they arrived at through flawed methodology. They went from saying “Wood cutting boards, not plastic, are safer for food prep” in the lead of the press release all the way down to “These results do not support the often-heard assertion that plastic cutting boards are more sanitary than wood” in the peer-reviewed abstract. The paper offered NO CONCLUSIONS. The authors were very quiet on the subject after. It was probably quite an embarrassment for them. To date, 20 years later, neither they nor anyone else has established that wood is safer which should be blindingly obvious as the USDA FSIS, the FDA, and the NSF do not recommend wood over plastic.

What you wrote in your original post was wrong from the very first sentence and in almost every sentence thereafter.“Oiling wood is not something you will want to do for a wood prep area.” - the study found there to be no difference. “In fact they found hardwood surfaces are the most sanitary work surfaces available” – no they didn’t they had to back away from that claim when they published their work. “They tested every type of cutting board surface including NSF rated plastics, rubber, stone, glass, ETC” – no, they only tested wood and plastic. “But it would grow on sealed wood surfaces” – first, that’s not what they said, and second, what they did say (the bacteria survived longer) they later backed away from. “They found bacteria would quickly die on hardwood surfaces” – no, they simply couldn’t find it and just assumed it was dead – a baseless assumption and likely the reason they had to retract their safety claims. “The study determined that there is a natural compound in hardwoods that actively kills bacteria, it has not been isolated yet, but thoughts are that it is in the lignin of the wood” – you just made that up. Nowhere do they say anything like that. Rather, they say “He and Ak have tried unsuccessfully to recover a compound in wood that inhibits bacteria.” In the other news story that I showed you, they acknowledge that they don’t even know if they are dead as they haven’t found the bodies.

Lastly, if you are using bleach water at 50:50, you are violating Federal law (and wasting a lot of bleach). In 21 CFR 178.1010 (c) (1), the FDA states that to be allowable, a bleach solution “will provide not more than 200 parts per million of available halogen determined as available chlorine.” At 50:50, you would be somewhere near 51,000 PPM or 256X the maximum allowed by law.

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"We make great pizza, with sourdough when we can, commercial yeast when we must, but always great pizza." Craig's Neapolitan Garage

The irony is just too rich. You think wood is safer than plastic and has magical antibacterial properties yet you use a sanitizing solution that 500X stronger than needed for plastic food contact surfaces?

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"We make great pizza, with sourdough when we can, commercial yeast when we must, but always great pizza." Craig's Neapolitan Garage

MADISON Q For decades now, cooks in homes and restaurants have been urged to use plastic rather than wood cutting boards in the name of food safety. The fear is that disease-causing bacteria Q salmonella from raw chicken, for example Q will soak into a cutting board and later contaminate other foods cut on the same surface and served uncooked, such as salad ingredients. It's become an article of faith among "experts" that plastic cutting boards are safer than wood for food preparation because, as the thinking goes, plastic is less hospitable to bacteria. It seems reasonable, but it just ain't so, according to two scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Food Research Institute. Dean O. Cliver and Nese O. Ak, food microbiologists in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, have found that in some as yet unknown way wooden cutting boards kill bacteria that survive well on plastic boards. "This flies in the face of the prevailing wisdom," says Cliver. "It isn't what I expected. Our original objectives were to learn about bacterial contamination of wood cutting boards and to find a way to decontaminate the wood so it would be almost as safe as plastic. That's not what happened." Cliver is quick to point out that cooks should continue to be careful when they handle foods and wash off cutting surfaces after they cut meat or chicken that may be contaminated with bacteria. "Wood may be preferable in that small lapses in sanitary practices are not as dangerous on wood as on plastic," he says. "This doesn't mean you can be sloppy about safety. It means you can use a wood cutting board if that is the kind you prefer. It certainly isn't less safe than plastic and appears to be more safe." Cliver and Ak began by purposely contaminating wood and plastic boards with bacteria and then trying to recover those bacteria alive from the boards. They also tested boards made from seven different species of trees and four types if plastic. They incubated contaminated boards overnight at refrigerator and room temperatures and at high and typical humidity levels. They tested several bacteria Q Salmonella, Listeria and enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli Q known to produce food poisoning. The results consistently favored the wooden boards, often by a large margin over plastic boards, according to Cliver. The scientists found that three minutes after contaminating a board that 99.9 percent of the bacteria on wooden boards had died, while none of the bacteria died on plastic. Bacterial numbers actually increased on plastic cutting boards held overnight at room temperature, but the scientists could not recover any bacteria from wooden boards treated the same way. So where did we get the idea that wood isn't safe? Cliver and Ak don't know. They did a literature search and have not found any studies that evaluated the food safety attributes of wood and plastic cutting boards. Although Ak, a graduate student at the Food Research Institute, will soon return to Turkey, Cliver hopes to continue the studies. A major question now, he says, is why wood is so inhospitable to bacteria. He and Ak have tried unsuccessfully to recover a compound in wood that inhibits bacteria. The first year of the study was funded by the Food Research Institute with unrestricted food industry gift funds; other funding sources are now being sought. Cliver and Ak will soon submit an article based on the research to a refereed scientific journal.

The 200 PPM max limit of your disinfectant solution that you got all twisted up over applies to active work stations, I clearly stated that I mist my boards with this solution after close, and let it dry overnight. I have Quoted that statement below for your ease of reading.

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I use monstrous bare hard-maple surfaces at our restaurant for our meat prep, they get degreased nightly and scrubbed with a citrus degreaser, then scraped and rinsed, then sprayed with a bleach solution mixed at 50/50 with water, that gets misted on the boards at closing and left to dry.

Why do I do this heavy concentration? Simply because I like the light blonde color of my work surfaces when I come in to open the next day. Would you like for me to outline my floor cleaning procedures so you can disapprove of them too, or maybe just to tell me that I am doing it wrong even though all the state and county health inspectors which I deal with have zero problems with my procedures.(My state has adopted the federal food code without any changes even though they may create more restrictive rules, they have not)By the way, ever hear of the natural wood cutting boards produced by "John Boos", They are made from the same material that I chose to have my work surfaces made from, And they are NSF approved. informational link>> http://www.kitchensource.com/cutting-boards/pdfs/jb-pr-release.pdfAnd a direct link to the NSF showing John Boos maple cutting board products NSF approval by model number http://www.nsf.org/Certified/food/Listings.asp?Standard=002&Company=24950&

It’s crystal clear that you don’t know the first thing about science. A press release is not science. You can say anything you want in a press release. Caveat emptor. A peer reviewed journal article is different. You submit your article and it is reviewed by fellow scientists in your discipline. If you make claims that cannot be substantiated, the referees will force you to remove them or they will reject your work and it will not be published.

What you have cited is a PRESS RELEASE and while it may be interesting reading, form a scientific standpoint it is meaningless. Want is meaningful is that NOT ONE OF THE STATEMENTS YOU BOLDED APPEARS IN THE PEER REVIEWED ARTICLE. NOT A SINGLE ONE. Why? Because there is no scientific basis for them. This was sloppy research from day one, capped off with a peer-reviewed paper that was unable to draw even a single conclusion. It establishes NOTHING with respect to wood being safer than plastic.

You say I have not provided any valid cites to support my opinion. I don’t need to. There is no burden on me. My opinion – that wood is not safer than plastic – is the scientific status quo. It’s you that haven’t cited anything valid. Show me something in their peer-reviewed paper or another scientific journal article that concludes wood is safer. You can bold press releases until you are blue in the face, and in the end, you will just be blue in the face.

So why is it that you can’t grasp the fact that I have never said that wood isn’t safe? Am I supposed to be surprised to hear that Boos has NSF certified products? Sorry to disappoint you, but I knew that already. But thanks for including the link to the Boos marketing anyway. I got a good laugh out of this line: “Two leading scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Food Research…” One of them was only a student…

The 200 PPM max limit of your disinfectant solution that you got all twisted up over applies to active work stations, I clearly stated that I mist my boards with this solution after close, and let it dry overnight.

The 200PPM limit applies to anything you don’t rinse after sanitizing. There is no provision in the code for letting higher concentrations dry, and before you get you get twisted up any tighter, I’m not saying it’s unsafe if you let it dry. It probably just leaves behind salt crystals. As far as me being twisted up, I couldn't care less what you do. I was simply pointing out that the gap between what you think you know and what you actually know is quite large.

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"We make great pizza, with sourdough when we can, commercial yeast when we must, but always great pizza." Craig's Neapolitan Garage

Thanks 2stone. I think your ovens are very cool. What is the story behind your "test kitchen" and where is it located? If you don't already have a thread on it here, you should! The pics on your blog are great!

Wow. I didn't realize I was having so many problems with oak. I'll watch with much interest to see if you can make a better pie on a different wood...

Please don't take my reply the wrong way. I have multiple threads of yours bookmarked as master chef work. You are the man!!!

I was just noting in conversation about surfaces and bacteria, that an open pore wood would be very different from a closed pore wood in regard to what it absorbs and what it holds. And there is no way to sand an open pore wood to change that. I'm a total rookie at pizza, but do pretty good with wood.

Thanks, Ha, ha,..... the story is probably the same as what happens to a lot of guys!!I really couldn't take over my wife's kitchen any more.....so I bought an old buildingin Buchanan MI (sort of a Chicago getaway) and started fixing it up, after two years,It's almost done. I use it to show the ovens as well as testing various flours and doughformulas. We will also be open to the public in the morning (3hrs.) for stone roasted coffee,Norwegian pastries and 3 hrs of pizza in the evening. Our menu will be small with 4-5 pizzas at the most. If all goes well, we will also offer a limited supply of stone baked sour dough Boules.I have been working on a natural starter (started locally in the old flour mill here in town) for a coupleof years now. With lots of washing and feeding the bread we are making with it is starting to taste pretty good along with having some good spring to it.